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Chief Petty Officer Desmond Starr

Character Information

Gender

Male

Species

Human

Age

53

Homeworld

Ithen

Physical Appearance

Height

183 cm

Weight

85 kilograms

Hair Color

Sandy Blonde

Eye Color

Blue

Physical Description

At first glance, it is immediately clear that Des is a vain cretin. His thinning, sandy locks are always slicked to a neat and old-fashioned side-part, a fifteen-minute daily session with tweezers, hair dye, and a little pair of scissors ensures that his beard is neatly trimmed and symmetrically coloured.

While the years have crept up on him, he indulges in a slightly illegal anti-aging repertoire on a fortnightly basis. Signs of the treatment are especially visible around his diminished crow's feet and his slightly stretched forehead skin. Additionally, the occasional bout of strained facial expression sets upon him like a sudden wind change. This usually lasts up to four hours.

Des has spent considerable time dedicated to aging like a fine wine; he brims with antioxidants, spends much time alone in the dark, and sleeps in a wooden barrel on Tuesday evenings.

Outside of work he can often be found working out. He enjoys running and the lifting of weights under three kilograms. This keeps him trim, agile and "delicious" when he is wearing his special green unitard for his workouts.

Family

Significant Other

Melota (ex-wife, 45, resides on Qo'noS)

Father

Keith Starr (dec.)

Mother

Fran Starr, 85

Brother(s)

Commander Terrence "Prank" Starr, 48, Commanding officer, USS Trieste

Personality & Traits

General Overview

Domineering. Dismissive. Delicious. All three terms have been used by Des to describe himself in recent times. While he is at least capable of demonstrating self-awareness, he also embraces these titles.

Impatient, and brash, Des has little time for social niceties, busy bodies, and sooks. Likewise, he has a dislike for many protocols and will often go out of his way to flaunt these in front of his superiors if the chance presents itself.

Reclusive to his last breath, Des has been a lone wolf from his early days as one of the few humans, and thus taller people, on Ithen, where he was an international laughing stock. He prefers to work alone, play alone and sleep alone. While some believe that his personality is unsuited to Starfleet lifestyle, and they're probably right, it took Des very little time to find the right job for him. An initial career in security gave way to solitary shuttle runs. A few years into his career, he witnessed a terrifying transporter accident that both petrified and intrigued him, leading to a career in technical services as a transporter specialist. To this day, he cannot step onto a transporter pad despite being quite aware of how safe they are.

After many years as a transporter technician, he is recognised, although reluctantly, as something of an expert in the field. This is thanks to a keen technical mind honed over years of Starfleet service. In recent times, he has begrudgingly contributed to engineering journals and technical manuals thanks to equally curmudgeonous academic contacts. Additionally, despite his social impediments, he is well known for taking beginners under his wing when they first enter the transporter specialist field. Perhaps uncharacteristically forgiving and unusually kind, he goes out of his way to ensure that young people get their best shot at being excellent transporter technicians.

While his technical work is more than proficient, his abilities as a non-commissioned officer are less praiseworthy. Compulsive to a fault, Des demands standards that are often unachievable to ensure he has to work alone. Further, the hostile workplace environment he fosters simply makes life difficult for others; usually matter-of-fact and tactless, Des is notable for cycling through crew quite quickly.

Despite this, Des hopes for more. He has spent over thirty years deliberately avoiding the limelight; secretly, he hopes to find a way to shine so he isn't simply 'the old crone in the transporter room'.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Desmond is a deft technician. While he cut his teeth on transporter systems, he has taken it upon himself- often without permission- to expand his knowledge of ship systems. Consequently, his technical expertise is generally multipurpose, this is perhaps owing to a natural hands-on talent as an engineer.

Desmond is also a skilled mathematician and planned to study pure mathematics at university. A desire to see the stars quickly drove that hope away, however, further training has expanded his knowledge as the years have gone on.

These aspects of Des' lifestyle have been supported by a keen mind; he is a deductive thinker, intuitive fault-finder, and lateral thinker.

For his few talents, Des carries a raft of inadequacies and idiosyncracies.

His compulsive nature means "good enough" is never good enough; for some, this is motivating. For most, it is just alienating. Thus, he is hard to work for and often prefers to get the job done right the first time; to him, this means that he has to do the work himself. This ethos lends itself to overworking, fatigue and stress.

Indeed, his demanding nature isn't merely for the benefit of ship and crew; he is truly hard to get along with. Cold, direct and condescending, he finds it difficult to restrain himself in some situations, even in front of officers.

Similarly, his reclusive nature does him few favours. Never would he choose to visit a bar over a good book and a glass of wine, or perhaps a unitard-clad aerobics session. Aware his solitary lifestyle isn't making him any friends, he is resigned to being a loner unless genuine opportunities present themselves.

He also plays a mean trumpet.

Ambitions

Des would very much like to find a job on a very small ship where he could be the only transporter officer. Despite his requests, the winds of his career have never carried him in that direction.

Following the end of his Starfleet career, Des would very much like to move on to studying mathematics like he always had planned to, perhaps on Earth. Also, he'd like to be forever young.

Hobbies & Interests

Des enjoys many of the pleasures afforded to a person who lives on the cusp of the 25th century. He enjoys holoprograms based around exercise, working out (but not with weights over 3kg) and investigating treatments to look younger.

His academic pursuits include perusing the vast Federation database for oddities, reading old (preferably leather-bound) literature and annotating his own copies of technical manuals.

Personal interests include playing the trumpet, sleeping in empty barrels, rearranging furniture and tending to miniature zen gardens.

Languages

Federation Standard, some Klingon, some Ithenite.

Personal History

Born from the genetic sequence of two human exobiologists in the year 2335, Desmond Alexander Starr was 'hatched' on the Federation world of Ithen. As a child grown in an experimental artificial uterus, he was guaranteed a difficult start, though a lack of parentage in his early years set him back greatly. A pink giant amongst bronzed dwarfs, Des had been ostracised by the local populace by the age of seven. Not only was his height an issue; his unusual status as one of the first artificially gestated sentient lifeforms born on Ithen was enough to attract attention. The fact he was a maturing off-worlder with an offensive name tipped the local media into an insane feeding frenzy for several weeks.

The media experience was downright humiliating and has scarred Des ever since, though he was fortunate enough to have the academic support of an Ithenite mathematician named Palmo. She cultivated his keen mind, though did little to support his social development. Despite this, Starr can attribute his preference of being called 'Des' (the word for 'one' in an ancient Ithen culture) to Palmo. She chose to shorten his name since 'Desmond' is a heinous insult on the Ithen homeworld.

Eventually, Keith and Fran, the exobiologist couple that ordered their tank-baby, arrived on Ithen to care for Des. This only took them eight years. It is alleged that the Starr family were involved in a decade-long thought-orgy and had forgotten about the son they had decided to cultivate. In this time, however, Keith and Fran found time to naturally conceive a belligerent little pill by the name of Terrence.

In a freak accident involving an Ithen owl and a cup of boiling water, Palmo died shortly after surrendering Des to his biological parents, thus limiting Des' options for guardianship. After a rocky process, he was slowly integrated into the Starr family but remained a second-best satellite to his brother, Terrence.

During his later childhood and teen years, Des attended a Ithen school. Expectedly this was a disaster, despite his relative academic success. Reluctance to engage with his parents and isolation from human culture made socialisation impossible and was extremely conducive to reclusive and anti-social behaviours. This was exacerbated by his brother who, by all accounts, was a difficult child who enjoyed tormenting Des. Often, Terry would have an audience for his cruelty, and earned himself the nickname "Prank" from the Ithenite children who were boundlessly amused at Des' expense.

At the age of seventeen, Des rejected an offer to attend an Ithenite university to study mathematics to journey to Earth. There, he decided to join Starfleet as a method of expanding his horizons and seeing new worlds, since Ithen was all he had known for many years. Deciding that space exploration was a top priority, Des enlisted in 2355. Throughout basic training, Des followed form and succeeded in his theoretical coursework and technical learning, however, it was noted by his instructors on multiple occasions that he was reclusive, withdrawn and uninvested. His knowledge and technical abilities, assessed to be at an outstanding level, was enough to allow him to pass and select a specialist qualification.

Starr entered the security stream against the recommendations of his course advisors shortly thereafter, because he would be able to pass out of training sooner. While he worked to become technically proficient at crowd control and marksmanship, it was noted that his poor interpersonal skills and a lack of life experience would hamper his success in the field. It was acknowledged, however, that Des was capable of exhibiting assertive behaviours and had keen investigative skills that could be honed with experience. Modest success in the security course, combined with proficiency skills in other areas allowed Des to be assigned to a starship rather quickly.

Starr reported aboard the USS Saratoga as a security officer in 2356. The Saratoga's one-year study of stellar nurseries in the Beta Quadrant gave him few opportunities to practice his military skills. Thus Starr spent much of his time recalibrating weapons, working on efficiency modifications and examining security procedures. His superiors, once again, identified a technical skill and uncovered his capability to work independently. During his time aboard the Saratoga, Des also took the time to train to develop an elementary skill as a shuttle pilot.

In 2358, Des elected to conclude his assignment on the Saratoga to pursue further training as an auxiliary craft pilot. By the time he had left the Saratoga he was often performing tasks in the shuttlebay and occasionally functioned as a pilot. He was accepted into training with a recommendation from the Saratoga's Chief of Security. He was assigned to Starbase 12 for several months therein to learn the particulars of shuttle piloting.

Following his training, Des was assigned to the USS Wellington as a shuttle pilot. While he found the comradery of auxiliary flight squadrons to be far too much to handle, he found the art of piloting to be a skill he enjoyed. Eventually, his skill paid off for him, as he was able to request reassignment to the Earth-Vulcan cargo run. This allowed him to spend days alone in solitude while ferrying interesting supplies between the two worlds.

Enjoying this lifestyle for almost three whole years, Des' career as a shuttle pilot came to an unceremonious end when his competence was called into question. Asleep at the controls when the guidance system of his craft failed, his shuttle collided with a Vulcan communications satellite. Naturally, pilot error was named as the cause of the mishap and Starr was forced to face a disciplinary tribunal. While he was eventually cleared, Des took the investigation and subsequent adjudication as a personal insult and left the shuttle piloting field altogether.

Still committed to the fleet, he sought a new career path to follow. Clear that his technical abilities were of a high standard, Des knew that he would retrain, formally, as a technician. Attending an 18-month course on transporter operations at the Starfleet Technical College on Tellar, he flourished. Feeling as though he belonged amongst the upfront and indelicate Tellarite people, he rated highly in his coursework and gained his qualification as a transporter technician.

His new specialisation, as well as his time served, earned him a promotion to the NCO ranks as a Third Class Petty Officer. This began a long career as a transporter specialist, starting with his first technical assignment aboard the USS Endeavour. Cutting his teeth on the new transporter systems that were introduced in the mid-2360s, Des knew he had found his niche. Popular with his superiors for getting the job done, he remained aboard the Endeavour until 2370, when many of the vessel's long-standing command staff were moved on to other assignments. Des immediately clashed with his new superiors and was reassigned at the best of the vessel's executive officer, who felt he needed both readjustment and a change of scenery.

To ensure he was transferred off the Endeavour, Des was promoted in rate to make him a more lucrative transferee. The Chief Engineer of the USS Norway, a friend of Des' brother, then brought him onto his staff as a technician on the beta shift. Often filling voids left by deaths resulting from the Dominion War, Des spent several years outside of the transporter room as a general technician, and later, a computer systems specialist aboard the USS Norway and USS Copernicus.

During the war, he saw combat multiple times and was injured in a ground engagement on Palia XII. Assigned to an away team tasked with rescuing the crew of a crashed shuttle, Des and his team found themselves facing off against a Cardassian infantry squad. Clipped by a disruptor beam in the firefight, Starr found himself spending several weeks in a recovery ward on a starbase. Though his actions during the shootout, along with those of his team, were noted by Starfleet.

Des spent some time recuperating in the bars and gambling establishments of Dessica II. Amongst the filthy swathes, he met his future Klingon bride, Melota, in a bar fight. Des attracted his mate by throwing a chair over her head and growling like a lunatic at an Efrosian pusher. Melota misinterpreted this and pursued Des for several days until he relented and courted her. Only a week later, he was married in a collapsing Dessican chapel by a Vulcan celebrant. The marriage certificate was witnessed by the Efrosian pusher that Des had assaulted.

The marriage lasted 23 hours.

Returning to Starfleet and looking to escape front line combat, he felt the call of the Heisenberg compensators and pattern buffers once again. He transferred to the USS Nobel as a transporter specialist toward the end of the war, though found his work to be monotonous after a while, considering his brush with death. As a change of pace, Des transferred across to the USS Aries to lead a work detail in refitting the vessel's computer systems over the course of several months. His attention to detail and work ethic on the assignment had him moved up to Petty Officer First Class. Following, he was assigned to the USS Galaxy as a transporter specialist, and several years later to the USS Yeager in the same position.

During this period, Des trained in warp engine dynamics and qualified as a warp field specialist. At the request of the Yeager's Chief Engineer, following a dust-up in the deflector control room, Des was reassigned to the USS Zapata as a warp field specialist. This short-lived assignment paved the way for Des to become a Transporter Chief, by qualifying him to become a generalist operations officer. Promoted to Chief Petty Officer, Des spent 18 months within the operations department of the USS Nash, often spending his shifts on the bridge. While it proved to Des that he was not suited for the overly-accountable lifestyle of a bridge officer, and thus returned to his life in the transporter room.

This began a rapid succession of assignments over the next few years where Des served as Transporter Chief. Constantly clashing with his superiors in a highly responsible role, he was passed from ship to ship, often by CO's buttering the bread of other Captains to ensure they got rid of him. Eventually, this taught Des to return to his old modus operandi of keeping his head down.

In 2391, Des reported aboard the USS Langport as Transporter Chief. His ethos of non-confrontation remains.